A Thousand Shards of Glass
by visionsofmangos
Summary: AU-of-an-AU spinoff of A Thousand Reasons. After Kiera dies unexpectedly in a terrorist attack, Alec has to figure out how to keep going without falling apart.


It's been another long day in a succession of increasingly long days, and his eyes are starting to glaze over. There's a woman smiling at him from across the bar; she's been making repeated eye contact for the last half hour, twirling long blonde hair around her finger. For a fleeting second, he lets himself consider the possibility, then tosses the idea aside. It wouldn't be fair to the random girl to use her to numb himself. Besides, he'd probably hate himself (well, hate himself _more_ ) in the morning. He's not _that_ drunk. Yet.

Several drinks later, Carlos magically appears beside him. Alec isn't sure how or when he arrived, but he's there. He's not drinking, only watching silently. Judging, probably. Oh, what the hell.

"You don't have to babysit me," Alec slurs, just barely summoning the energy to inject the words with any amount of ire.

"On the contrary, the number of bar fights you've started in the last three days alone indicates your very real need for some supervision. I figured, all things considered, you'd rather have me here than get hauled off to the drunk tank. Also, you really can't take a punch."

"Bruise easily," Alec mumbles, loosely gesturing at his face.

"You need some better coping skills."

"You need to mind your own damn business."

"Like it or not, you are my business now. She would've asked me to look out for you."

"Yeah, well, she isn't here, is she?" On impulse, he yanks the ring off his finger and hurls it across the room. " _She's not fucking here_!" he shouts, and several heads turn in his direction, but he doesn't care. It's unbelievable how much he doesn't care.

Carlos fixes him with a hard stare. "You know what? I get it; you're angry. You're entitled to be. Hell, I'm angry too! It shouldn't have happened. And I _get_ that you're grieving, but Alec, you should at least _know_ that you're acting like a child."

"Maybe I am a child," Alec bites off bitterly.

"No. You're not. You haven't had that excuse in a long time." Carlos leaves Alec's side briefly to retrieve the discarded wedding band from the floor. "You'd regret that eventually. Now, get up. You've had enough; I'm taking you home."

Nights are the hardest. Somehow he manages to remain functional – barely – during the day, but all bets are off come evening.

He vacillates constantly between self-loathing and seething rage. This wasn't supposed to happen. Things had finally been calming down somewhat. So when Kiera went to follow up on a burglary at a tech start-up that didn't even exist in her 2077, she had expected a routine investigation. But what Liber8 had begun in this time had grown far beyond its founding members, and Kiera paid the price for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

She'd been one of seventeen casualties of a bioterrorism attack. A poisonous gas engineered by malcontents inspired by Liber8's call to arms. After everything the city had seen in the last few years, this latest event barely registered as a blip on the radar. In lighter moments, Alec had compared Vancouver to Gotham, or any other city supposedly made safer by a superhero's presence. Danger and death: common side effects of saving the world. Hubris in the face of that danger: a recipe for disaster.

He doesn't sleep anymore. Insomnia has plagued him for years, but now, it's the nightmares that have him clinging to wakefulness. For sanity's sake, he naps in brief spurts, setting an alarm to cut down on the risk of entering REM sleep. Despite his best efforts, he still dreams sometimes. Each instance, it's the same scene. He can't stop replaying her death on repeat, consciously or unconsciously. Many times he's been tempted to delete the footage, but he can't bring himself to do it. Besides, it's burned into every fiber of his being. And there's no way to delete a file from his brain – yet.

Funny how he can't stand to dream when he's sleeping, yet it's all he wants to do when he's awake. He's started using Flash, though sparingly – it's harder to come by these days. He knows not to trust what he "remembers" while on the drug; it's just as often wish fulfillment as it is a true memory.

Carlos has taken to dropping in unannounced – the detective has become a real thorn in his side lately – and catches Alec one evening in the midst of chemically coping. Carlos squints at him with that judgmental look that's becoming entirely too familiar – "Are you _high_?" – and, satisfied with his conclusion, promptly jumps straight to barely suppressed disgust. "That's disrespectful, don't you think? She lost her sister to that stuff. Where are you even finding it? I thought we tracked the last of that poison down."

It's not hard to ignore Carlos's self-righteous meddling when the tangible world is so far away from what he's experiencing. Right now, he's remembering – imagining? – the weight of Kiera straddled across his lap, the heat of her lips on his, the chill of her always-icy hands cupping his face, the silky texture of her long dark hair knotted around his fingers.

When he comes down, though, to his dismay, Carlos is still there.

It's aggravating how _together_ Carlos is. The difference, Alec thinks, is that Carlos is deeply acquainted with tragedy. In his field, a sudden, violent death is common enough. Alec is no stranger to loss, but not like this. His dad's death was hard, but at least it wasn't murder.

How do you move forward from that kind of singly defining event? He teeters on the edge between committing to revenge, vigilante superhero style, and trying to fix it somehow.

The subject of a redo comes up somehow with Carlos, who is quick to point out all the ways it could go wrong. "It's not like rebooting a computer – or, actually, maybe it is. Who knows what kind of data you could corrupt if you do it wrong?"

"I can't not try, Carlos. I already had to watch her die once. If I leave it the way it is, if I don't at least try to go back and change it – it's like I'm letting her die all over again."

"I know you're probably not in the mood for a philosophical debate right now, but Alec, you have to think about what you're saying. Even assuming you figure out a way to make the time travel device functional again – even if you made it back to the right point in time – who's to say you're even really changing anything? Taking into consideration all this paradox stuff… I mean, if you're able to change the timeline, is it really even the timeline, the people, you knew? Not to mention the ripple effect it could have on the things that have happened since."

"I realize that I'm supposed to care about all of that, but I don't. I really don't. If there's even the slightest chance of saving Kiera…"

"Would she want you to, though? If she knew what you were planning, and she knew everything that could get screwed up, all the uncertainties – would she actually encourage you to go through with it? Be honest with yourself. Are you doing this for her, or are you doing this for you?"

It's like everything inside him shuts down in that moment. Jaw clenched, he grinds out, "You've overstayed your welcome."

To his surprise, Carlos lets it go and leaves. But his words echo in Alec's head long after he's gone.

It doesn't take long for his measured consumption of Flash to fall to the wayside in favor of dwelling in his hazy, carefully reconstructed world. As the frequency of his use increases, maintaining a steady supply becomes a problem. Since the VPD cracked down on the drug's distribution fairly early on in its life cycle, it never really had a chance to catch on, and it's scarce these days. Against his better judgment – an oft-silenced voice of late – Alec begins looking into the process of synthesizing Flash himself. Chemistry was never his preferred science – he's drawn to chips and cables moreso than beakers and burners – but that's not to say he's not good at it. And it's not like he doesn't have the resources.

 _"Would she want you to, though? Are you doing this for her, or for you?"_

More than anything – well, almost anything; it's in the top three, anyway – he wishes he could control what circles through his brain night after night. In between images of Kiera gasping for breath in her final moments, he's preoccupied with the various ethical dilemmas associated with his quest to change the past. It's not as though he's made significant progress toward that goal, either. He wants to be able to turn off that voice – it sounds suspiciously like Carlos's these days, but it's got notes of Kiera to it, too, and yeah, maybe he recognizes a bit of himself in it also – that tells him he's making an impulsive decision for the wrong reasons. That he isn't really trying to change things in order to save Kiera, but in order to assuage his own guilt. And it isn't fair, it isn't _fair_ that he has to choose, somehow, between doing the right thing and letting her go. Maybe it should make a difference that she's already gone, that he already failed once to save her. Somebody should tell that to the accusatory thoughts plodding their well-worn path in his brain for the millionth time.

It's another in a long series of sleepless nights interrupted by nightmares.

Absentmindedly, Alec passes his phone from one palm to the other, replaying in his mind (the old-fashioned way, this time) a conversation he had with Carlos weeks – months? – ago:

 _"Three missed calls from Mom? You're definitely not avoiding anything, nope."_

 _"Give me that."_

 _"You know, for a tech genius, you have surprisingly poor security habits. Anniversaries are always the first guess for a passcode."_

 _"Good thing I didn't use my anniversary, then. Give me my phone."_

 _"Close enough. It's the date Kiera arrived, isn't it?"_

 _"Which is not exactly common knowledge. Give. Me. Back. My. Phone."_

 _"Have you even talked to your mom since it happened?"_

 _"There were words exchanged," Alec answers vaguely, then he holds out his hand and demands, "Phone."_

 _"Have you considered that she might be grieving in her own right? She knew her, too. You were not the only person who loved Kiera Cameron."_

 _At that, Alec proceeds to attempt to stare a hole through the carpet._

 _The phone thunks against the side of his head. "Call your mom, kid."_

 _"I thought I wasn't a child anymore?"_

 _"'Call your mom, grown-ass adult' doesn't roll off the tongue quite as nicely," Carlos replies, tossing a quick sort-of wave over his shoulder as he shuts the front door behind him._

Begrudgingly, Alec acknowledges that Carlos had a point: he's put off the inevitable long enough. Scarcely breathing, he dials his mom and waits, half hoping it'll go to voicemail and half afraid it will and he'll have to go through this all over again another day.

It rings only once before his mom picks up. "Alec?" she says breathlessly.

"Hi, Mom," he says in a small voice.

For a long moment, there's only silence, heavy with all the truths neither knows how to speak. Then: "We don't have to talk about her yet," his mother says cautiously. "Whenever you're ready. I just… I'm so glad to hear from you, sweetheart."

"I appreciate it, Mom, I really do, but…" Alec swallows hard. "It's probably good, you know? To talk. To listen. To stop pretending everything is going to go away somehow. Besides, I… I don't have the monopoly on mourning."

Tentatively, his mom asks, "Where would you like to start?"

"I miss her," Alec says brokenly. It's harder to verbalize than he expected, even such a basic phrase, a simple fact. It's honest and raw and far, far too much. He feels like he's made entirely of edges.

On the other end of the line, his mother is crying softly. He can tell she's trying to hide it, but he can hear her hiccups in the long pauses.

Feeling like every word is a mountain, Alec manages to explain, "I'm not ready… to talk yet. But… I can listen."

"What do you want me to talk about?"

"Everything," he says simply, and she does. She tells him about life on the farm, and all the gossip from her book club, and her strained relationship lately with Julian, and the rosebush she's planted in memory of Roland, and the new movie she saw with a friend last week. Interspersed throughout are glimpses of Kiera: memories of her, conversations she wishes they'd had, regrets over not getting to see the two of them more often, humorous anecdotes about Kiera's ceaseless excitement over the horses at every visit.

It's incredibly painful, an unimaginable kind of agony, and he can't fathom how he can keep discovering new ways this loss can wound him. Yet it's also strangely healing, to hear the impact his wife had on someone else's life beyond his own. In a way, it's like reaffirming that she existed, she mattered, she left a mark. How comforting it is to know that he is not alone in having been changed by Kiera's presence here.

He wakes up the next morning to a text from Julian. He avoids opening it until he gets to work, afraid of… well, he's not sure what he's afraid of, exactly, but he knows he's much less likely to break down completely when he's engaged in a comfortable routine in the presence of strangers, so procrastination it is.

(Sadtech has taken off nicely – it grew beyond just Alec and Kellogg some time ago – and Alec is so scared that without Kiera's direction and influence, it'll become the very thing he's been trying to avoid. It's probably time to consider how to extricate control of the company from Matthew Kellogg's grasp, but frankly, the thought of changing anything right now terrifies him. It will happen eventually. He has to keep marching forward; Kiera's death doesn't change his goals – it only amplifies the importance of what he's trying to do. Still, it's a daunting task all the same, and he's not in any state to accomplish it right now.)

It's nearly lunchtime by the time Alec braves Julian's text. _Heard you finally talked to Mom_ , it reads. Pretty innocuous, as texts from family members you haven't spoken to in months go.

Another hour passes before Alec braces himself and replies. The conversation builds from there over the next several days, until Julian extends an invite to meet for coffee before work. As anxious as the prospect makes Alec, he realizes it's not the kind of offer he's in any position to reject. He's done enough to shut people out lately; it's probably time to stop burning bridges while he still has the chance to mend them.

Initially, their interaction is as stilted and uncomfortable as he'd expected. Finally, he blurts out what he's thinking: "You don't have to… Look, I know things were… _tense_ between you two."

"She held me against my will and aimed a gun at me; that does tend to put a damper on a relationship." Julian sighs. "The truth is, we both had some growing to do. I'm not excusing what she did back then, but to be fair, I was hardly a saint, either. I'm actually grateful to her for working with me to figure out a way to use my platform as Theseus for good, you know? I'd like to think… I hope that this time around, we won't need to stage a revolution. But if the time comes, I want to lead battles that aren't fought with violence. And Kiera helped me see that as a real possibility. To see my role in this as an opportunity, rather than a burden."

"An admirable goal, to be sure. Though I'm not convinced I'd agree that what you've been involved in isn't a revolution in its own right. Just because it's quieter doesn't mean it's not world-changing."

"Yeah," Julian responds softly, obviously lost in thought.

They finish their coffee in contemplative silence. As they prepare to part ways, Julian says suddenly, "For what it's worth, I'm glad you met her. She changed you, Alec. For the better, I think."

It's a kind thing to say, more gentle than he would have expected from Julian, and it catches Alec off guard. "I…"

"Let's do this again sometime, yeah? Maybe someplace that actually makes a decent latte next time, though." He raises his hand in a limp half-wave and walks away briskly, leaving behind a sort of open door that Alec isn't sure he's ready for quite yet, but is grateful for just the same.

This time, Alec knows for sure that what he's experiencing is one hundred percent the Flash and not a true memory, because in all the years that he and Kiera were married, they never once danced together. Alec's feet have never really been great at doing what his brain tells them to do, and dancing was never really Kiera's thing, so by mutual agreement – and yes, there was a conversation about it – it was an activity they avoided.

All the same, in his mind, he's reliving a scene that never happened: swaying together to unheard music in their living room, twirling in some kind of vaguely waltz-like pattern until Kiera steps on Alec's foot and knocks them off-rhythm. She starts to apologize, but then Alec very deliberately stomps on hers right back, and they collapse on the couch in a fit of giggles.

That exact scenario may have been an invention of his imagination, but the memory of laughing with the woman he loves aches nonetheless.

As he's coming down and slowly reorienting himself to reality, he recognizes with a jolt that Carlos is sitting at the kitchen table.

"What the actual hell, Carlos?" Alec yelps.

Unperturbed, Carlos glances up from the laptop he's been intently frowning at. "Welcome back," he says dryly. "Hope you don't mind, I thought I'd get some reports done while I waited. You're a pretty terrible host, you know."

"Maybe because I didn't actually invite you? How did you even get in? I'm like ninety percent sure I locked the door this time."

"Oh, I had a key made ages ago. It's not hard to pickpocket you when you're always off in la-la land."

Alec bristles and shoots Carlos a glare. "If you're here to make some sanctimonious speech, I'll save you the trouble. Drugs are bad, I need better coping skills, blah blah blah – I got it, thanks. Now that we've covered the finer points, you can take your lecture and shove it up your—"

"Relax," Carlos interrupts. "I'm just here to steal your Wi-Fi. My router's been on the fritz since Tuesday, and the paperwork's been piling up. Side note, you really should prioritize inventing the successor to Wi-Fi; really, it's long overdue. Also, sadly, your fridge is disturbingly sparsely populated, which has been severely interfering with my productivity. Further proof of my 'terrible host' observation from earlier."

"I didn't know I was expecting guests," Alec snarks back, but his anger is starting to dissipate. He pulls up a chair and joins Carlos at the table.

As hard as it is for him to admit it, Alec has realized that he actually does appreciate his friend checking up on him periodically. It's not like this has been easy on Carlos, either, but he's still going out of his way to make sure that Alec doesn't fall apart completely. It's thoughtful, in an annoying sort of way.

Carlos clears his throat. "I have a question, but you have to promise not to get pissy."

"Off to a great start already."

"Don't be an ass."

"But it comes so naturally."

This earns him an eyeroll, which is quickly replaced by a deadly serious expression. "Why do you take Flash?"

Instantly, the rage is back. He wants to take back all the nice things he just thought about Carlos. "I told you, I'm not interested in your lecture—"

"I'm not telling you to stop. I just want to understand. What does it do for you? Why Flash, as opposed to something else?"

"Well, it's not like I can go to a grief counselor and explain, 'Hey, my time-travelling wife was killed in an attack by terrorists who were inspired by a movement started in response to an oppressive regime spearheaded by an alternate timeline version of me in the future,' can I?" Struggling to get his emotions under control, Alec breathes deeply and attempts an honest response. "It's not about avoidance necessarily, although that's part of it," he begins slowly. "I guess it's like a do-over, you know? Recreating my world so she's still in it. If I'm not going to actually try to change what happened…" Carlos quirks an eyebrow at this, but otherwise his reluctant decision not to pursue further manipulation of the time continuum goes unacknowledged.

"At least this feels like I'm doing _something_. Giving some version of her – and me – a chance to be happy again. And allowing myself to recognize that it wasn't always like this. It was easier then. Or – maybe it wasn't. I don't know. It was better, anyway. Because I'll take a bad world with Kiera in it than a good world without her every time. I know that makes me selfish; I don't care."

Carlos nods thoughtfully. "You know, she told me that, with Flash, it's not an addiction in the usual sense. There's no physical dependence, no withdrawal, that sort of thing. It's the way it makes you feel that you eventually can't go without. The idealized version of the past that it presents. I can see where it would be tempting to dwell there."

Alec fiddles with the string on his hoodie. "I know I eventually have to figure out how to live in reality. And… I'm trying. I'm just not sure I know how anymore."

"You do realize you don't have to do this thing alone, right? I understand that there are solid reasons why you can't go the traditional therapy and support group route, but that doesn't mean you have to isolate yourself completely. You've got allies in this battle, Alec, people who care about you, people who cared about Kiera and would be happy to help you figure out a way to cope without her. Your mom, for starters – I get that she doesn't know the whole story, and that complicates things; but she knows _you_ , and that counts for something. It may not be a bad idea to consider letting her in on the backstory, actually, but that's up to you."

"Like she'd ever believe me," Alec mutters bitterly.

"I think you'd be surprised. Plus, you've got Julian – I know you two aren't close, but you're on the same side these days at least, and I'd be wiling to bet that he cares about you more than you realize. And, you know, you've always got me – I don't know how much help I can be, but on some level, at least, I do get it. It's not the same, I know, but she meant something to me too, and—"

"It's not a competition. She was my wife; she was your partner. Our friend. Neither is more or less, not really. Just different.

"I appreciate it, I do. It's going to take time, you know, to figure out how to function… how to be present and not just a ball of poorly managed angst… but it's good to know I don't have to go at it solo." Alec manages a weak smile. "Thanks, Carlos. For being there when I didn't deserve it. For saving me from myself, or whatever."

Later, when Carlos is gone, Alec dials the one number he still knows by heart. It feels better, for some reason, than simply pulling it up from his frequent contacts. "Hey, Mom. Is there a time this week I could come by? There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about…"

He hasn't decided yet whether he'll tell her everything. Regardless, it's time to stop pretending he has to do this on his own, that he even can. And asking for help, admitting just how bad it's been, actually reaching out to someone – that's the first step.


End file.
